Your Name Engraved Herein Review (Movie)

 Your Name Engraved Herein More Like Heroin

image credit: IMDB

Director: Kuang-Hui Liu
Cast: Chen Hao-sen (Edward Chen), Tseng Jing-hua, Leon Dai, Fabio Grangeon

A Review By T. M. Fazar Izzamuddin

                This is the first post of this blog, and I think, what a better way for me, an Indonesian raised and born, to start this blog than with a review of an LGBT film. This will surely be a good addition to my resume. “Why do you get into a fight for love?” the movie began with such a strong sentence. I wonder the same. Was it for the beauty of love between two men that this film perfectly presented? Was it for the heart-wrenching scenes that made you couldn’t help but reminisce about that one person you forever love? Was it to answer the question of God and his love that the protagonist trying to make sense of? Was it to soothe the pain and suffering that I felt through the characters in the film? Perhaps it wasn’t about the reasons, love knows no reasons after all, but for the memory of love between two best friends this film portrayed beautifully. The memory which I often find myself reminiscing no matter how painful it hurts my heart.

                Your Name Engraved Herein, directed by Kuang-Hui Liu, was set in an all-male Catholic school in Taiwan after the martial law had been lifted, yet the remains of the doctrines were still ingrained within the people’s minds and defined how they act, should act. Within this school, Chang Jia-han (Chen Hao-sen/Edward Chen) met the newly transferred student Wang Bo Te or Birdy (Tseng Jing-hua) in a pool in which later Birdy tried to show his prowess in holding breath which looked like he tried to drown himself. A total boyfriend material. Don’t believe me? Ask Jia-han, he eventually fell in love with the man. Not the best thing to do in a Catholic school, I know. However, this setting gives you a perfect expectation of what the film is about; the notion of LGBT love in a homophobic country, the notion of homosexuality in a Catholic perspective, the notion of self-discovery, and the notion of teenage love. An expectation which the film surpassed using excellent storytelling and beautiful emotional cinematography enchanting numerous people giving it the Best Cinematography award at Taipei Golden Horse Award.

                That being said, the cinematography isn’t the only thing this movie excels at. The story itself is based on the director’s own experience which, contrary to popular belief, isn’t a guarantee for a good movie. It’s much harder to create a film based on a true story. The life of someone even just a day is too much to be compressed into two hours of film. Too much information will make the message you’re trying to get across get convoluted or even lost along the way, while less information will make the audience do not understand the message you’re trying to get across. Walking on this thin line, the movie managed to find a perfect balance in the plot delivering a heartwrenching love story between A-han and Birdy. From the perfect introduction to the movie, setting you in the world of 1980s Taipei, introducing you to both of the characters, showing you how these eventually best friends developed feeling for each other, to the struggle that both of them faced and how both of them dealt with it in their own way; all of it was thoughtfully picked to later be presented in an emotional way through beautiful shots that emphasize their emotions rather than speech.

image credit: Oxygen Films

    Showing rather than telling probably explains a lot about the way the movie did its cinematography. Instead of relying on expositionary dialogues, the movie focused on telling you about what happened through the emotion and expression of each character included in a shot. Of course, the movie wouldn’t be able to do it without Chen Hao-sen and Tseng Jing-hua who were able to expertly portray their character, their emotion, and the emotional progression each of them experienced.  From Chang Jia-han gradual interest in Birdy that never had been spoken but always there to his anger, confusion, hopelessness, and hopefulness that he felt at the same time as he argued with Father Oliver (Fabio Grangeon); Chen Hao-sen managed to deliver everything Jia-han felt let that be through dialogues, expression, or even postures; shown or hidden. This allowed the audience to grow on Jia-han not only through the sense of similar experience of that someone who will always have a place in your heart, which is commonly used by people when they tried to empathize with a character, but also through feeling what Jia-han felt; his interest, his growing crush, his happiness with Birdy, his confusion with Birdy’s actions around him, his jealousy towards Birdy’s girlfriend, his dying devotion towards Birdy, and his eventual heartbreak. You grow to know Jia-han as you watch the movie, and by the end, you couldn’t help but feels his heartbreak as if your own heart breaks together with his.

                Tseng Jing-hua’s interpretation of Birdy cannot also be ignored. Unlike Jia-han who tried to hide his feeling with the emphasis on “tried”, Birdy was truly the master of his craft. Throughout the movie, you’ll always find him either laughing or smiling, hiding his true emotion in that smile without trying to let go. It’s so well hidden that it probably took all your heart to understand Birdy’s feeling. Tseng Jing-hua managed to show Birdy’s emotion, his interest in Jia-han that he returned his love but was too coward to admit it which he solved it by running away from and even fighting it which eventually destroy him, and hid that emotion throughout the movie excellently. This was what made the chemistry between the two characters, despite them not being together, was so palpable. By the end of this movie, your heart probably had already been destroyed twice by these two characters.

image credit: IMDB

                    These two characters aren’t the only pillars of this movie, they were the huge ones, but aren’t alone. Their friends, Birdy’s girlfriend, and other people they encountered helped the two developed to be who they were at the end of the movie and helped to maintain or to serve as a plot point for the emotional progression and character development of the movie. One of the most notable was Father Oliver, the choir teacher and unofficial love counselor whose trademark was “profiter du moment”. Yes, he probably wasn’t your usual priest, and Fabio Grangneon showed that through the father’s zealous belief in love. He was more than just a priest whose job is to guide his students to the light of God, he was more than that, and you can see that even in the scenes where he and Jia-han argue about the concept of love, God’s love and Jia-han’s love. Even in that scene, if you look closely into his eyes and listen to his voice, you could feel he’s also not just an ordinary priest who wants to guide his homosexual student back to the path of God. He was yet another character who has a lot in his mind. He might not be the protagonist or his love interest, but Father Oliver’s presence in this movie presenting the group of people who are rarely portrayed when you talk about the relation between God and homosexual love. The group of people who don’t believe that God loves no matter what, but their love is a sin and they should repent. Yet they couldn’t help but sin. They cannot help but love whom they fall for, even if it’s a person of the same sex It is who they are after all, so instead, they are willing to go to hell. To present this group of people together alongside Jia-han who believe “God’s love you no matter what” added more nuance and accentuated the bittersweet feeling you develop throughout the movie.

                Although the movie’s reliance on showing rather than telling is one of its greatest strengths, it’ll also become one of its weaknesses. Because the movie relies a lot on emotion shown rather than dialogues, simply watching the movie wouldn’t be enough for you to enjoy the movie. The audience needs to be invested in the movie from the beginning to the end to be able to fully comprehend the movie itself. For some people, it’s hard to do, especially for those who have no relatable experience at all with Jia-han, because they need extra effort to not only focus on what the movie is trying to deliver while also being bombarded with the constant emotional scenes. You lose focus once, you will still be able to watch and experience the emotion, but you might not understand what is happening.

                Another flaw that the movie has is the ending which seemed to be out of nowhere. I understand that, after spending the entirety of the movie in a high school in Taipei, it’s hard to suddenly appear in Canada years after graduation meeting the characters again in a world that seemed okay with homosexuality. Well, I have a different take on that. For me, the movie ending wasn’t necessarily the “ending”, meaning that this wasn’t the end of Chang Jia-han and Birdy’s love story. Their love story ended right before they jump to when everyone is way older. You could tell it because Jia-han himself was the one who ended their love story, saying goodbye to his past love through a song while breaking his heart in the process, again. Then what is the meaning of the movie’s ending? What purpose did it serve? The movie ended itself in such a way to give a soothing ending to your heart after being broken many times throughout the movie while giving a nod of appreciation to the world for how much has it grows. It did not serve as Jia-han and Birdy’s ending, but it served as a lighter ending for the audience giving you hope for a better world. However, seeing how this movie loves breaking your heart so much, I wouldn’t even be surprised if the ending actually trying to say that yeah the world has changed, but it changed too late for our boys.

                The music… well, music isn’t really my forte, but the music in this movie is great. Like, in times when I want to watch the movie again but I couldn’t because I am afraid to cry, I would listen to the soundtrack and still ending up bawling my eyes out anyway.

Image credit: IMDB

                Final Score: 10/10

                Justification: Yeah, this movie isn’t perfect and it has flaws, but what movies that don’t have any flaw? It’s either it doesn’t have a flaw for you or you can’t see it. This movie tries to replicate the emotional feeling of the director’s experience and realizing it on the screen and it did that. It tries to show you how bare and pure Jia-han and Birdy’s love is even after comparing it to God’s way of loving and it did just that. It tries to tell you a story of two men who fell in love at the wrong place at the wrong time conveying the pain they had to endure and it did that beautifully. I can’t help but feel a sense of fulfillment after watching this movie and for me, that is the most important thing in a movie. For this reason, no matter how much it hurts me to watch this movie, I couldn't help but coming back to it once in a while just to watch the beauty torn my heart to shreds while giving me the sense of fulfillment.